their population and the development of culture. This may then be followed by the annexation of smaller political entities into a larger whole defined by a peripheral boundary. As a nation's growth and development continues, the state begins to strive towards the enhancement of its own welfare. Eventually, however, the entire process is acted upon by outside forces. Often rivalries will develop as different states annex their surrounding areas. Indeed, Ratzel compared nations to living organisms. He believed that, in some ways, the political growth and development of states paralleled biological growth and development.
In the current world geopolitical order such processes may now be occurring. However, they do not result from colonialism, but rather come as a consequence of the Soviet Union's demise. In December of 1991, the "mighty political monolith" of the U.S.S.R. was replaced by fifteen different sovereign states (Mandelbaum 1). Presently, these states are in the process of determining who they are and what their identity is. Only then will they be able to define their own strategic national interests. In fact, with the end of the Cold War, even some established nations need to re-evaluate their own national interests (Fuller 129). Such analyses will most certainly delineate the world's future international relationships.
A third component of geopolitical thinking consists of heartland theory. Sir Halford Mackinder (1904) called the Eurasian
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